Olson Kundig is pleased to announce that it was named one of 18 professional winners of the Small Lots, Big Impacts Design Competition with its submission, Small Lots, Big Hangout, led by David Alf, Adriana Carlos, Dylan Corr, Corbin Cook, and Mitch Lorberau, with design mentorship by principals/owners Steven Rainville, AIA, LEED AP, and Kirsten Ring Murray, FAIA, and storytelling mentorship by principal/owner Alan Maskin, LEED AP. Hosted by cityLAB-UCLA, this competition challenged designers to address the urban housing crisis in Los Angeles by creating sustainable, multi-family low- and mid-rise dwellings that can be adapted across the city’s small, publicly owned lots.

Small Lots, Big Hangout reimagines multifamily housing as a celebration of density and community. Rejecting the typical double-loaded corridor model, the design introduces a network of open-air walkways and shared spaces that form a vertical neighborhood of houses in the sky. Interstitial spaces become social infrastructure, weaving homes into a communal fabric that reflects LA’s outdoor culture. A 9-foot by 13-foot mass timber grid with mass plywood flat plate floors supports 36 units, with each unit emphasizing porosity to enhance daylight and support cross-ventilation cooling. The building employs radiant systems, reducing energy use and improving the carbon footprint. This mid-rise prototype revives the “missing middle” for collective urban living, offering a climate-responsive model that can be replicated across lots of various sizes.

Winners of the Small Lots, Big Impacts Design Competition will move into the second phase of the competition, which will require responding to the development team’s RFQs in August.

For more information on Small Lots, Big Impacts, please visit cityLAB-UCLA.

Small Lots, Big Hangout, Los Angeles, California, USA
Primary Team: David Alf, AIA, Adriana Carlos, Corbin Cook, Dylan Corr, and Mitch Lorberau
Design Mentors: Steven Rainville, AIA, LEED AP, and Kirsten Ring Murray, FAIA
Storytelling Mentor: Alan Maskin, LEED AP
Building Performance Review: Vikram Sami, AIA, BEMP, LEED AP
KPFF Consultant Engineers Structural Review: Amie Sullivan, PE, SE, and Jessica Westermeyer, PE, SE